Day 3 18/02/2019 “getting used to Finland”

Some of us looked very tired already but most of us are still very excited. At the start of day 2, all teams came to together to start with a warm-up. The students and teachers played a game to learn names quicker, it was fun but it wasn’t faultless, to say the least. The games were fun and the fatigue of the last 2 days was slowly fading away. After the warm up the real deal started. Hans the director of the Dutch team gave the students an assignment to portray the seven most important events in the book. “Close your eyes,” Hans said constantly and then the next event was portrayed, this went on and on until all the groups had done all 7 events. Everyone tried their absolute best to say the least and it actually turned out to be really fun, but this wasn’t Hans his real test.

Next up on the program was ‘the talk’ and no it is not what you think it is. Hans was discussing with his actors how they want to make the play. The dilemma was “Drop the book and start all over again or base the story directly from the book”. This group is very creative so of course, they choose the first option, and then the discussion began. Everybody has different ideas and after a while, something was decided, I do not want to spoil anything so I am going to keep my mouth shut. They kept discussing the themes for around 2 hours, so all the students were craving some movement. So naturally speaking it was singing time. under the wise guidance of Paulien, the students started singing.

After the singing was done it was lunch time. For the Dutch, this was special because the Dutch students almost never eat warm lunch and in Finland, they do it every day. So naturally you saw some confused faces but it was nice because everybody had a few minutes to catch up with all the talking. The rest of the day was spent mostly practicing for the play, it ranged from singing to acting. After a long day, everyone was ready for some relaxing in the sauna.